Madam Pomfrey's glare could have curdled milk.
"I'm glad you know enough to come to the hospital wing," she snapped, "but I am not pleased you didn't come to me first."
She held up Harry's right arm as though presenting evidence in a trial. It hung from his shoulder with the wrong kind of freedom, boneless and soft, an obscene imitation of flesh meant to be supported by something firmer.
"I can mend bones in a second," she went on, voice sharpening, "but to grow them back… sigh.."
"Merlin's beard! Harry will have to stay like this for the rest of his life, then?" Ginny blurted with a cheeky grin.
Ron stared in bafflement, "You.. will still be our friend, Harry."
Pomfrey's eyes flicked to Ron, then to Ginny, then back to Harry. "Hey! Don't scare the young lad! Of course I can make them grow back. But it will be painful, and he will stay here overnight. Now. Pajamas."
She threw a set at Harry's chest. The curtains were drawn around the bed. Ron went in with him.
Hermione and Ginny waited outside, listening to the faint struggle as Ron tried to dress a boy whose arm behaved like wet rubber.
Ron's voice carried, loud with vindication. "How are you going to defend Lockhart now, Hermione? If Harry wanted his bones removed, he'd have asked for it himself."
"Everyone makes mistakes," Hermione insisted, stubborn even when the evidence was practically waving at her. "And his arm doesn't hurt now.. does it, Harry?"
From within the curtain came Harry's strained, bewildered answer. "It really doesn't hurt."
Ginny watched Hermione's face and found it almost frightening. Even now, Hermione was trying to salvage a mistake by calling it a variation.
"Hermione," Ginny said, keeping her voice low, "be sensible. If Madam Pomfrey couldn't fix this, Harry's hand would be ruined. Lockhart didn't make a minor error. He almost crippled him."
Hermione's mouth tightened, hurt and defensive, but before she could reply, Madam Pomfrey reappeared with a large bottle clutched to her chest.
SKELE-GRO, the label proclaimed in harsh black letters.
"This night will be difficult," she said, as if announcing a sentence. Steam rose as she poured out a cup and thrust it at Harry. "Growing bones is a most unpleasant business."
Harry drank with the same expression he might have worn facing a curse.
Ron, alarmed by that expression, tried to change the subject as quickly as he could. "At least we won, right?" he said, forcing brightness into his voice. "You catching the Snitch. Malfoy's face. He looked like he wanted to kill someone."
"I want to know what he did to that Bludger," Hermione said, anger finally giving her something solid to hold. "It wasn't normal."
"We can add it to the list," Harry mumbled, voice already slurring with exhaustion and potion fumes. "Ask him when we drink the Polyjuice. I hope Polyjuice tastes better than this stuff…"
Ginny's quill hand twitched in her mind as though she could feel it. Polyjuice. The word landed like a dropped vial.
"Polyjuice Potion?" she repeated, too smoothly, too casually. A test.
Hermione froze.
Harry's eyes widened in immediate regret.
"Harry," Hermione hissed, and in a panic she grabbed the nearest thing and pressed it over his mouth. It happened to be a pillow.
Ron lurched in front of Ginny as if he could block words with his body. "You misheard," he babbled. "There's no Polyjuice. We can't brew Polyjuice. That's a potion even older students can't brew. The recipe's in the Restricted Section and we'd have to steal things from Snape and we'd need somewhere private and we don't have any of that so it's impossible."
Harry shoved the pillow away with his left hand, the movement awkward and resentful. "Ron," he gasped, "you've just explained everything."
Ron went pale. "Please don't tell Mum."
He looked as if he might bow.
Ginny waited for dramatic purpose, "Of course I won't report it," she said at last, in a voice that made Hermione exhale and Ron sag with relief. It was the sensible answer. It was also the convenient one.
Then she tilted her head, as though thinking it through. "So you want to turn into Slytherins and ask Malfoy if he opened the Chamber of Secrets."
All three nodded, too quickly.
Hermione stared at Ginny now, suspicion and surprise tangled together. "Wait. You know Polyjuice Potion. You know what it does."
"I saw it in a book," Ginny said, tone flat. She didn't embellish. She didn't need to. She could practically feel the old knowledge sitting behind her eyes, neat as an index. "If you don't mind, call me along when you do it."
Ron's refusal was halfway formed when the door burst open and the Gryffindor team flooded the ward with mud, noise, and triumph. They carried armfuls of food and bottles like invaders with a feast.
Madam Pomfrey went incandescent.
"This child needs rest! He has thirty-three bones to grow. Out. Out!"
She drove them back through the doors with the righteous fury of a woman defending her territory. Ginny let herself be swept out with the rest, calm in the chaos.
At the entrance, Colin Creevey bounced on his toes, clutching something in his hands, eyes bright with anxious devotion.
"Is Harry in there?" he asked, craning his neck.
Ron shifted away from him as though Colin were contagious.
"Don't stare, Colin," Ginny said lightly. "Madam Pomfrey won't let anyone in. But you could, if you were careful."
Colin's eyes widened. The idea took root immediately, fast and obedient as ivy.
Ginny didn't wait to see it grow. She turned and walked away, letting the body's fatigue settle into her bones. Curfew was hours off. There was time to rest.
There was also time to hunt.
That night, 'Ginny's' eyes opened in darkness that was not her dormitory.
The air was wet and ancient. Stone pressed close. The smell of old water and older secrets lay over everything like a film. Somewhere above, Hogwarts slept in ignorance.
In the Chamber of Secrets, the Basilisk was coiled like a living wall, its scales catching what little light there was with a dull, cold sheen. It watched without watching, patient as a weapon that had never learned to doubt its master.
Elijah sat upright on the serpent's head as if he'd been born there. He could feel Ginny's small body protesting, the exhaustion in her muscles, the faint ache behind her eyes. He ignored it. He had been careful these days. Careful enough. Tonight would be quick.
"The second hunt," he murmured, and even whispering Parseltongue felt like pushing something sharp across the tongue. "Close your eyes."
The Basilisk obeyed, lids lowering over death. Even now, it was not truly blind. It listened. It smelled. Its body moved with the certainty of an avalanche.
Elijah guided it out into the pipes, then up and out, into corridors that lay silent beneath torches and moonlight. Without Mrs. Norris, the castle's night had grown lazy. Filch still patrolled, but he was a man groping in darkness, missing the one sense that had ever mattered.
Elijah avoided him with ease.
The hospital wing lay ahead, bright even at night, a place that reeked of antiseptic magic and human frailty. Elijah kept the Basilisk's eyes shut and slid it along the corridor like a shadow made solid.
A small figure came humming around a corner, a bunch of grapes in one hand and a camera dangling in the other.
Colin Creevey.
He stopped so abruptly he stumbled. Grapes scattered across the stones, rolling and bruising. His face tilted up and up until it found the serpent, huge beyond any child's understanding, and then found Ginny seated above it.
For a heartbeat, Colin's mind tried to turn it into something else. A prank. A nightmare. A story.
His voice failed, then returned in a thin squeak. "Ginny?"
Elijah looked down at him. There was no hatred in the gaze, no relish. Only a tidy, clinical acknowledgment of an obstacle that had wandered into the wrong place at the right time.
"Ginny, you're…" Colin swallowed hard. "You're the Heir of Slytherin?"
"That's right," Elijah said mildly. "And unfortunately, no third person will ever know."
Colin's hands shook as he snatched up the camera. The instinct was almost admirable. If he had to die, he would at least leave proof.
The flash fired.
For an instant, light filled the corridor.
And then the Basilisk opened its eyes.
He watched the moment the camera's mechanism seized, plastic beginning to soften under magic too violent for it. He watched the human body stiffen, not dead, just petrified.
"Good night," Elijah said softly. "Little Gryffindor lion."
He turned the Basilisk away before any portrait could take interest, before any wandering ghost could drift close. The castle's corridors were full of eyes that did not blink, and he had been careless once already.
He would not repeat the mistake.
By the time Ginny's body lay back in bed, breathing evenly, the night had smoothed itself over as if nothing had happened.
...
In the hospital wing, Harry Potter woke with a strangled gasp.
Pain detonated in his arm, savage and intimate, as if thousands of needles were threading themselves through flesh. Skele-Gro did its work with the indifference of an algorithm, forcing bone back into existence shard by shard.
Harry's breath hitched. Tears came unbidden. He clenched his fist and found he could not.
Something was wiping his forehead with a damp sponge.
"Get off!" he rasped, and swung blindly.
The thing dodged. In the dim light it was a small, pale creature with enormous ears and eyes like polished stones.
Dobby.
Harry's anger surged through pain. "You," he hissed. "You did it. The barrier at King's Cross. You nearly got us expelled."
Dobby flinched, then straightened in a strange parody of dignity. "Dobby is used to death threats," he said miserably. "Dobby hears them five times a day at home."
Harry's eyes snagged on the filthy pillowcase hanging off the elf like a garment.
"Why are you wearing that?"
"It is a sign," Dobby whispered, tugging at it. "A house-elf can only be free if his master gives him clothes. They are careful. They do not even give Dobby socks, sir."
For one soft second, Harry's anger wavered.
Then Dobby opened his mouth again.
"Harry Potter must go home," Dobby pleaded, voice trembling with devotion and panic. "Dobby tried to make Harry Potter go home. Dobby thought the Bludger would surely make…"
Harry's head snapped up. "That Bludger? It was your doing!!??"